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The tokens should be smaller and accessed less frequently. Potentially enough (in both aspects) to facilitate being backed up by printing out to some long-term

The tokens should be smaller and accessed less frequently. Potentially enough (in both aspects) to facilitate being backed up by printing out to some long-term hard copy like Base64 encoding on paper. Additionally, they could make it feasible for places like spotify or google play music to sell "Bring Your Own Album" streaming service priced by operational costs rather than licensing fees. Instead of accessing the content in their normal subscription, you can access anything for which you can present a valid license.

pavel_lishin 6y ago
Smaller is a benefit, but you're still beholden to Spotify or some other service holding your music for you, and continuing to honor the agreement. Whether this agreement is stored as an NFT on the blockchain, or in Spotify's database doesn't matter, as long as they - or someone else! - can unilaterally yank that data out. And they can. As far as files go, I'm reminded of the Robert Heinlein quote - probably mangled, maybe apocryphal - that you don't truly own anything you can't carry in your arms at a dead run.
- shuntress 6y ago
  The music does not belong to me. The cryptographically secure token proving I own license to duplicate the music is what belongs to me.
  - pavel_lishin 6y ago
    Ah. I like it when the things I pay for belong to me.
    - shuntress 6y ago
      It is important to distinguish between the physical media and the intellectual property. When you buy a CD, you own the physical CD but not the music. If you go to a concert and the band plays some song from that CD, you wouldn't brag "Wow they are playing *my* song! I bought that song! I own it!" The thing you own is the license to reproduce that music. With old media, this license was essentially an afterthought inherent in the physical media itself due to the cost of producing a copy being so high. Now with digital media, the cost of producing a copy is too low for that model to work.
      - pavel_lishin 6y ago
        I would argue that with old media, the license was explicitly and permanently baked into your purchase price - after all, you owned the physical medium. You could access it any time you wanted to, without asking permission every time. I think moving away from this model sucks. We used to purchase the license; now we're renting it. In my above comment, the music didn't belong to me, but the license did.

pavel_lishin 6y ago

Smaller is a benefit, but you're still beholden to Spotify or some other service holding your music for you, and continuing to honor the agreement. Whether this agreement is stored as an NFT on the blockchain, or in Spotify's database doesn't matter, as long as they - or someone else! - can unilaterally yank that data out. And they can. As far as files go, I'm reminded of the Robert Heinlein quote - probably mangled, maybe apocryphal - that you don't truly own anything you can't carry in your arms at a dead run.

shuntress 6y ago
The music does not belong to me. The cryptographically secure token proving I own license to duplicate the music is what belongs to me.
- pavel_lishin 6y ago
  Ah. I like it when the things I pay for belong to me.
  - shuntress 6y ago
    It is important to distinguish between the physical media and the intellectual property. When you buy a CD, you own the physical CD but not the music. If you go to a concert and the band plays some song from that CD, you wouldn't brag "Wow they are playing *my* song! I bought that song! I own it!" The thing you own is the license to reproduce that music. With old media, this license was essentially an afterthought inherent in the physical media itself due to the cost of producing a copy being so high. Now with digital media, the cost of producing a copy is too low for that model to work.
    - pavel_lishin 6y ago
      I would argue that with old media, the license was explicitly and permanently baked into your purchase price - after all, you owned the physical medium. You could access it any time you wanted to, without asking permission every time. I think moving away from this model sucks. We used to purchase the license; now we're renting it. In my above comment, the music didn't belong to me, but the license did.